Costa Rica moved up one spot to 18th place in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index released Thursday by Reporters Without Borders, reaffirming its standing as the freest country for journalists in Latin America even as press freedom hits a 25-year low globally. The country posted a score of 12.08 in the new ranking, edging up from 19th place in 2025 and outperforming established democracies including Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Australia.
Finland topped the 2026 Index, followed by the Netherlands and Norway, with Costa Rica sitting just ahead of Namibia and Canada. It is the only Latin American nation in the top 20 and one of just a handful of countries in the Americas to retain a “satisfactory” press freedom classification.
The modest rise comes against a grim global backdrop. RSF’s 25th annual Index found press freedom scores declined in 100 of the 180 countries and territories evaluated, and for the first time since the ranking was launched in 2002, more than half the world’s countries now fall into the “difficult” or “very serious” categories. The share of the global population living in a country where press freedom is considered “good” has plunged from 20 percent to less than 1 percent.
Costa Rica’s improvement is partly relative — several peers slipped while San José held steady. RSF noted that journalists in Costa Rica can exercise their profession without obstruction and benefit from a solid legal framework guaranteeing freedom of expression, with the constitutionally established separation of powers respected alongside control and supervisory bodies. The organization also described the country as a refuge for persecuted journalists from across the region, particularly Nicaraguans fleeing repression at home.
Concerns flagged in past reports persisted in the 2026 assessment. Repeated verbal attacks against journalists are contributing to a rise in self-censorship among media professionals, while the concentration of media ownership in the hands of a few conglomerates has limited media pluralism. President Rodrigo Chaves has clashed publicly with outlets including La Nación and Teletica throughout his administration, and access to public information has been a persistent friction point with state institutions.
The contrast with the rest of Latin America is stark. Javier Milei’s Argentina fell 11 places to 98th and Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador dropped eight places to 143rd, with RSF linking both declines to a deterioration in political and social indicators reflecting government hostility toward the press. Ecuador plunged 31 places to 125th following the 2025 murders of journalists Darwin Baque and Patricio Aguilar, while Peru fell 14 places to 144th after four journalists were killed there last year.
Venezuela remained at 159th with deeply uncertain press freedom guarantees despite the release of detained journalists earlier in the year, Cuba sat at 160th amid a crisis forcing the few remaining independent journalists underground, and Nicaragua’s media landscape at 168th was characterized by systematic repression and a collapse in working conditions for reporters.
The United States also recorded a notable decline. The U.S. dropped seven places to 64th, with RSF citing what it called President Donald Trump’s “systematic policy” of repeated attacks on the press and journalists, alongside drastic cuts to funding for U.S. international broadcasting.
RSF said the average score of all 180 countries surveyed has never been so low in 25 years, attributing the trend to increasingly restrictive legal arsenals — particularly those tied to national security policies — that have steadily eroded the right to information even in democratic countries. More than 60 percent of countries — 110 out of 180 — have criminalized media workers in various ways, the organization reported.
For us here in Costa Rica, the 2026 ranking shows that our democratic guardrails remain meaningful in a hemisphere where they are increasingly the exception. Legal protections, judicial independence and physical safety for reporters continue to set our country apart. With the political indicator the weakest of its five RSF scores and a presidential election cycle on the horizon, sustaining that lead will depend on whether the next administration treats critical media as a democratic feature rather than a political target.
The full 2026 World Press Freedom Index is available at rsf.org.
